How To Marry a Millionaire: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack | |
---|---|
Soundtrack album by Alfred Newman and Cyril Mockridge | |
Released | March 15, 2001 |
Recorded | 1953 |
Genre | |
Length | 69:08 |
Label | Film Score Monthly |
Producer | Lukas Kendall, Nick Redman |
How To Marry a Millionaire: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the official soundtrack album for the 1953 20th Century-Fox film How to Marry a Millionaire. The score was composed and directed by Alfred Newman, with incidental music by Cyril Mockridge. The album was originally released on CD by Film Score Monthly on March 15, 2001, as a limited edition of 3,000 copies, and then it was re-release on January 4, 2005.
The film features an actual overture after the fashion of a live theatrical extravaganza. The 20th Century Fox Orchestra is arrayed before the camera to perform "Street Scene," conducted by Newman. This serves to highlight CinemaScope's new four-track magnetic stereophonic sound system and widescreen visuals. The orchestra appears throughout in wide shots and there are no closeups of any of the players, nor of Newman. At the conclusion of "Street Scene," Newman turns to take a bow before launching into the "Main Title". The orchestra reappears briefly for the "End Title", also an arrangement of "Street Scene".
Newman originally composed "Street Scene" for the film version of Elmer Rice's 1931 play Street Scene, a portrayal of New York (which explains its distinctly Gershwinesque flavor, a la Rhapsody in Blue), and used it in numerous subsequent New York-based films (The Dark Corner, Kiss of Death, Cry of the City, I Wake Up Screaming, How to Marry a Millionaire). Much of the rest of the score for How to Marry a Millionaire consists of similarly familiar, preexisting compositions, including several pieces composed by George Gershwin.